If you’re a WordPress fan, you’ve probably heard about Contact Form 7 – a “legendary” WordPress contact form plugin. The problem? Despite its popularity, the plugin lacks direct Zapier integration.  Yet, automating your contact forms is critical for optimizing your workflow.

In this article, we’ll look at how to overcome that problem and connect Contact Form 7 to Webhooks (and Zapier). But first, let’s take a quick look at the plugin itself. 

Ps. Never worked with Webhooks? Check out my Foundational Guide to Zapier Webhooks first.

What Is Contact Form 7?

Contact form 7 (often abbreviated CF 7) is one of the most popular form plugins for WordPress. Today, it’s used for thousands of businesses from across hundreds of industries. In fact, It’s been around for so long, many webmasters treat it as their go-to form builder.

One of the biggest advantages of Contact Form 7 is that it’s very easy to get started with. Here’s a quick CF 7 tutorial video by Matt – WordPress Doctor:

Another big advantage of CF7 is that there are quite a few plugins that expand the plugin’s possibilities. A great example is the Conditional Fields for Contact Form 7 plugin.

conditional fields for contact form 7 plugin

One thing you need to be careful is that because CF 7 has been around for several years now, some of its addons have become outdated. Thankfully, many of the key plugins that can be used alongside Contact Form 7 – including the one you can use it to connect it to webhook – are still maintained. Still, you want to be careful whenever you’re installing any third-party plugin.  

Why Connect Contact Form 7 to Zapier?

Integrations (and the automation that comes with them), play a key role in every modern business workflow. They allow you to send data on the spot, without having to copy-paste it between apps. This saves you time and allows you to execute consecutive processes in your business workflow right away. 

Sadly, Contact Form 7 offers only a handful of such integrations. The available ones include Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), Akismet Constant Contact, Captcha, and Stripe. If you ever choose to integrate the latter with your CF7, you may want to leverage the excellent Stripe Zapier integration. That way, you can easily automate both your communication and payments.

That’s not really much in a world where the average business needs several tools for sales, marketing, and all of its other areas.

Moreover, CF7 doesn’t let you do much with the message sent using one of the forms you create either. 

But, that’s where Zapier can help you. 

Considering that Zapier gives you integrations with thousands of apps, adding Contact Form 7 to the mix sounds like a no-brainer.

Doing this would allow you to :

  • Add submissions and/or support questions to existing leads in the database. 
  • Add new emails to your CRM.
  • Get Slack or SMS notifications whenever someone submits your form. 
  • Add people to your mailing list.
  • Forward the messages to the right person on your team (whether it’s the technical or sales team.
  • Add the messages to your ticket tracking system.

Considering all you can do with Zapier automation, the list could go on. But, why wonder if we can take action?

So, let’s find out how you can connect CF7 to Zapier!

How to Connect Contact Form 7 to Zapier

Unfortunately, Zapier and Contact Form 7 lack direct integration. On one hand, it may be surprising – after all, it’s an extremely popular contact form and a lead generation plugin. On the other hand, it’s an open-source software, and the time of people working on it is extremely limited. 

Thankfully, just because there’s no direct integration doesn’t mean you can’t connect CF7 to Zapier at all. 

To do that, we’ll need to use Zapier Webhooks.

Unfortunately, this is where we come across a second problem. This is because, there’s no way to connect Contact Form 7 to a webhook out of the box either. Thankfully, there are several tools – both free and paid – you can use to connect CF7 with webhook and, as a result, Zapier. 

How to Connect Contact Form 7 to a Webhook?

There are several tools you can use to connect Contact Form 7 to a Webhook. In this quick guide, I’ll look at both free and paid options you can use to do that. Now, before you ask – why would you use a paid tool if you can choose the free one?

Usually, the main difference between them is the amount of additional automations they allow you to use. But, before we get to the tools, let’s take a quick look at how to get the webhook link (you’ll need it later).

How to Create Zapier Webhook Link

To get the webhook link, head over to Zapier and create a new Zap.

In the window that pops up, select “Webhooks by Zapier” as the trigger app:

the Webhooks by Zapier app

Next, select “Catch Hook” and click continue. You can leave “Pick off a child key” as empty. Then, copy the URL provided by Zapier you’ll need it later.

testing a webhook by zapier trigger before connecting to CF7

Note: don’t click “Test trigger” just yet – you can do that once you add the URL to the WordPress plugin you’ll use to connect CF 7 to Zapier. Now, let’s jump right to reviewing those tools!

Free Tools to Connect Contact Form 7 to Webhook

There are both free and paid plugins that you can use. As you’ll see, some of the paid ones still allow you to connect Contact Form 7 to webhook but will limit your other configuration options.

CF7 to Webhook

cf7 to webhook wordpress plugin image

CF7 to Webhook is THE plugin to connect contact form 7 to webhook.

If all you want to do is connect CF7 to a webhook and send form submission data to Zapier, this plugin is exactly what you’re looking for.

It’s free, easy to install and configure, and it will get the job done. Here’s how to use CF 7 to Webhook:

First, go to Plugins > Add New and search for CF7 to Webhook. Select “Install” to start installing it.

Installing CF7 to Webhook in the WordPress "Add a new" plugin panel.

Once you install and activate the plugin, go to Contact Form 7 and start creating a new form. You’ll see there’s a new tab available with the webhook settings:

A new Contact Form 7 plugin tab - Webhook

Go to the settings and copy-paste the Webhook URL that you created in the Zapier step. Make sure that you also tick the box next to “Integrate” to turn on the integration:

Configuring Webhook URL inside the CF 7 to Webhook plugin.

Note that as you keep adding new fields to your form, you may need to update your Webhook settings to add those fields to the data sent to the Webhook.

In this case, simply add “your-data-field-name”: “??????”, to the Data Sent to Webhook field.

Once you configure CF7, it’s time to test it. Go ahead and submit it to the link you obtained in one of the previous step and select “Test Trigger” in Zapier.

If everything was set up correctly, you should get the form submission results:

cf7 to zapier webhook trigger step test

And that’s it! As you can see configuring Contact Form 7 webhook is pretty simple. Now, let’s take a quick look at some of the other options available.  

Use the WP Webhooks Plugin

wp webhooks landing page

WP Webhooks Plugin is a premium WordPress plugin. But, it allows you to automate sending data from Contact form 7 to a Webhook in its free tier. The only caveat is, you can only do that for a new form submission (exactly what you can do with the CF 7 to Webhook plugin). If you want to take advantage of other automations or connect CF7 with other applications without leaving WordPress, you need its premium version.

In case you’d like to invest in it, it’s $149 for a single site per year or 249 for 10 sites. But, as mentioned, the basic CF7 integration is available in its free version. And how do you connect Contact Form 7 to Zapier using WP Webhooks?

To connect Contact Form 7 to Webhook, you need to have both WP Webhooks and Contact Form 7 installed on your WordPress site. Then:

  • First, go to Zapier and create a new Zap. Set Webhooks by Zapier as the trigger App (so exactly what you could see in one of the previous sections of this article). 
  •  Then, copy the URL provided by Zapier
  • Go to your WordPress website dashboard.
  • Now, go to Settings > WP Webhooks > Send Data > Form Submitted
  • Paste the Zapier Webhook URL to the “Form submitted” trigger. Your Zap is now connected to that trigger. 
  • You can now customize the request that is sent to Zapier and pre-filter it based on select factors. 
  • Now, save the workflow and test it in Zapier.

And that’s it. Of course, the plugin allows you to automate a lot more – so I encourage you to check it out, both in its free and paid version!

Premium Apps to Connect CF7 to Webhook (and More!)

In this section, I’ll review the “paid” options you can choose to connect Contact Form 7 to Webhook in Zapier. While you could use your CF7 plugin with one of the free options mentioned earlier, the following apps allow you to do a lot more (and, as a result, automate more). However, you need a premium package to be able to use Uncanny Automator.

Use the Uncanny Automator Plugin

uncanny automator plugin that can be used to send contact form 7 data to webhook

Uncanny Automator is a robust automation platform for WordPress. It allows you to connect and automate dozens of different WordPress plugins, CF7 included. It’s a premium plugin (the plugin costs $149 per year for one site, down from $199). If you decide you want to create comprehensive automation workflows for your WordPress website, this plugin will help you do that.

Here’s how you can connect Contact Form 7 with Zapier in a few simple steps.

First, go to Dashboard – Plugins – Add New and search for “Uncanny Automator” plugin. Install it just like you’d install any other plugin:

Uncanny Automator plugin in the WordPress plugins search results

Next, open the Uncanny Automator plugin. You’ll be asked to connect you website:

  • Go the Uncanny Automator plugin website and register a free account. You get 250 credits with a free account which is enough to cover basic CF7 webhook WordPress needs. But, if you’ll ever want to automate more processes, on your WordPress website, you may want to try their paid account.
  • Once you register the free account, go back to WordPress – you’ll be asked to connect the site. If you’re still logged into your account, simply click the Connect your free account! button:
Connecting Uncanny Automator to a free account
  • Next, choose “Add New” below “All recipes” in the Automator menu panel – you’ll be asked to choose a recipe type:
uncanny automator recipe choice

This recipe type will depend on whether you want your Contact form 7 Webhook to be available for all website visitor or just logged-in WordPress users. In most cases (you’re using contact form 7 for lead generation or to communicate with potential clients) you want the “Everyone” option.

Next, select Contact Form as the trigger:

contact form 7 trigger step uncanny automator
  • Select “A form is submitted” as the trigger (the only one available in the free plan). Select the contact form that you want to trigger the recipe.
Choosing the right Contact Form 7 form
  • In the “Actions” tab, select Zapier as the action. Then choose “Send Data to Zapier Webhook”:
choosing Zapier webhook as an action in Uncanny Automator

To proceed, you’ll need the webhook URL that you created earlier (if you haven’t scroll up to the Zapier example). Make sure that you leave the request method as “POST”. Also, please note that there are a few optional fields you can edit. Unless you know you need to edit the data field, leave JSON as is. The same applies to the Headers field (unless there are additional headers you need).

main part of the webhook settings

In the body section, add the key value pairs that you want to pass to Zapier. The key is what you name the data in Zapier. The value is the data that you pull from Contact Form 7:

adding contact form 7 values to the body of the automator webhook

Click Send Test to test the Webhook to see if the connection is OK. Now, go back to Zapier and check for sample data. If you didn’t get any – go back to Automator and check your setup. 

successful zapier webhook request

Note: If you’ve never used the selected contact form, you may need to submit it manually while setting up the recipe.

As you can see, the Uncanny Automator plugin is quite easy to use. However, if you can connect Contact Form 7 to Zapier with WP Webhooks for free – and then buy a premium subscription once you feel like using all its extra features – I think it’s going to be a better choice than Uncanny Automator.

Old Ways of Connecting Contact Form 7 to Zapier (Outdated):

There are a couple of other ways in which you can connect your favorite contact form plugin to Webhooks. Some of them take advantage of WordPress plugins. Unfortunately, some of those plugins were not updated for a long time now. 

This means that using them to send data may make that data vulnerable. Moreover, an outdated plugin may pose risk to the entire website. 

In fact, the creators of CF7 themselves have released a warning against outdated add-on plugins: 

A contact form 7 message to its audience regarding outdated add-ons

Because of all the security vulnerabilities that come with outdated plugins, it’s best to avoid them altogether. At least until they get an update.

WP Webhooks + Contact Form 7

old contact form 7 WP webhooks plugin

WP Webhooks – Contact Form 7 Integration is another WordPress plugin you could use to integrate Zapier with CF7. While it wasn’t made specifically for Zapier, it did its job well and allowed sending data between the two.

Sadly, as of mid-2023, the plugin hasn’t been updated for over 2 years. As a result, it’s very unlikely that it’ll work. Not to mention that installing outdated plugins on your website is very dangerous. 

Note: Because I’m not checking these outdated plugins every day, it’s possible they got an update since I wrote this article. If that’s the case, please let me know and I’ll be happy to update this article. 

Contact Form 7 – Are There Any Alternatives? 

Contact Form 7 is extremely popular. However, since it was first released, the number of form plugins and apps has increased almost exponentially. Today, there are many great (and easy to integrate with third-party apps) plugins, including:

  • WPForms
  • Ninja Forms
  • Gravity Forms

As well as third-party apps, including:

  • Tally (that we use ourselves)
  • Typeform
  • Jotform

Naturally, the choice will depend on what exactly you need the forms for. But, if you want an easy way to send data to Zapier – it may be a good idea to consider other options.

Start Automating Your Contact Forms Today

Whatever it is you’re using the forms – automation is key to optimizing your workflow. If you want to take advantage of automation, I can help you connect your WP forms with Zapier. Learn more about Zapier Consulting or go ahead and schedule a free 20-minute consultation and let’s talk about your automation needs.

Jacek Piotrowski
Jacek Piotrowski

Hey, I’m Jacek. I’m the founder and Chief Automator at Clickleo.com

I’m on a mission to help you use automation to reclaim your time and achieve more in your business.

You can find out more about me – and why I started Clickleo – over on this page

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